Putting Mixed Martial Arts Together with My Secret Dice Method in Private Lesson
- Jamie Clubb
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Mixed Martial Arts Personal Training
A fighter can look competent in separate rooms and still fall apart in the corridor between them.
That is one of the most common problems in combat training. Boxing can be tidy. Kicking can be sharp. Wrestling entries can be technically correct. Ground work can make sense in isolation. Then the moment the ranges collide, the student hesitates, overcommits, or reaches for a favourite answer that no longer fits the question.
This recent private lesson was about that corridor.
My regular private client continued working through his range of martial arts using what I call my Secret Dice Method. We had already covered boxing, kickboxing, muay Thai, wrestling and submission grappling as separate but connected training themes. Now it was time to put the pieces together inside a Mixed Martial Arts format.
I use the word “format” deliberately. I do not treat mixed fighting as a mystical blend where everything becomes possible and therefore everything is equally useful. That is poor thinking. Fighting is governed by pressure, position, timing, rules, fatigue and fear. A lesson has to expose those things without collapsing into careless brawling.
The dice gave us a clean way to do that.
Why I use the Secret Dice Method
The Secret Dice Method is simple. Each person rolls a die and keeps the number hidden. I do not show my number to my client. He does not show his number to me. The number decides what scores for that person during the round.
All the permitted techniques of the session remain available. The restriction is not on what you may attempt. It is on what actually counts.
That distinction matters.
If I tell a student, “Only work for takedowns,” the task becomes obvious. Both people know the agenda. The training partner can shut the door before the skill has to hide itself inside real movement. It becomes a drill with a costume on.
If the scoring condition is secret, the student must disguise intention, read the other person, and adapt. The training partner must also do the same. This creates a live problem with a clear aim, rather than an abstract sparring round where people repeat habits and call it experience.
Combat sports already understand this principle. Rules shape behaviour. A boxer stands differently from a wrestler because the scoring conditions and legal threats are different. A judoka enters and grips differently from a kickboxer for the same reason. Change what scores and you change what the body begins to value.
The die lets me change that value system quickly, cleanly and fairly.
It also helps prevent the cult of the favourite technique. Many students have one or two trusted tools that have worked well enough in friendly sparring. That is not inherently wrong. A good game should have reliable weapons. The problem comes when a favourite answer becomes a false religion. Dice work makes the student prove competence under shifting conditions.
That sort of pressure fits my wider approach to coaching, writing and physical training. I am interested in clinical truths, not comforting mythology. If something survives pressure, it earns attention. If it only works when the room agrees to protect it, it belongs in the museum.
The scoring conditions for the lesson
For this lesson, we used six scoring conditions. Each number was linked to a fighting area or tactical demand.
Dice number | What scored | What it tested |
1 | Stand-up strikes outside the clinch or ground | Distance, striking accuracy, exits and composure |
2 | Clinch strikes and dominant holds | Close-range control, posture, head position and pressure |
3 | Ground work | Position, escapes, control and finishing attempts |
4 | Counter techniques | Timing, patience and reading the opponent |
5 | Wall work | Pinning, escaping and attacking when movement is restricted |
6 | Takedowns, throws or sweeps | Entries, balance breaking and commitment |
The conditions were broad enough to allow natural fighting, but narrow enough to make each round meaningful.
For example, if my number was 6, I could jab, kick, clinch, defend and move, but only a takedown, throw or sweep would score for me. If my client had number 1, he could use wrestling defensively, but only clean stand-up striking outside clinch or ground engagement would count for him.
This immediately creates a richer problem than standard sparring.
One person might be trying to draw out a strike to enter for a takedown. The other might be trying to punish that entry with a counter. Neither person can be certain what the other is seeking. This uncertainty makes the choices more honest.
It also exposes something I see often in private tuition: a student may understand a technique but fail to understand the route to the technique. The die forces the route to become part of the work.
What each number revealed
A well-designed training game should show the coach something useful. This one did.
The stand-up striking condition tested whether my client could keep his work clean without becoming reckless. In many mixed rounds, people throw strikes merely to get to the clinch or to cover a wrestling entry. When only clean striking outside the clinch scores, distance becomes valuable. Footwork must do more than transport the body. It must manage risk.
He had to ask simple questions under pressure.
Am I striking because I see a target, or because I want to feel busy?
Can I leave after I land?
Can I make the other person miss without standing still to admire the escape?
The clinch condition shifted the lesson into a different truth. Close range punishes fantasy quickly. Posture, head position and underhooks become plain facts, not stylistic preferences. Strikes in the clinch also change the psychology of holding. A dominant grip that permits the other person to hit freely is not dominant in any useful sense.
Ground scoring exposed the old danger of treating the floor as a separate country. In a mixed format, the entry to the ground and the return to standing matter as much as the ground position itself. A student who is comfortable in submission grappling can still make poor choices if strikes, walls and takedowns are part of the same problem.
The counter condition was one of the most valuable. It punished anticipation and rewarded perception. A counter is not just “wait, then attack”. It requires reading a committed movement, staying composed and responding at the right moment. If the response comes too early, it becomes a lead attack. If it comes too late, it becomes survival.
The wall condition changed the shape of the fight again. Many people train in open space and then lose their structure when their back touches a boundary. A wall reduces escape routes. It turns poor posture into a liability. It also makes some attacks easier and others less available. In my teaching, wall work is a vital bridge between combat sport and self-protection, because real environments rarely offer perfect space.
The takedown condition tested commitment. Throws and sweeps demand timing, balance and a willingness to enter danger. Half-hearted takedowns often create worse positions. The dice made the student build strikes, feints, clinch pressure and movement around the takedown without announcing it.
That is the point. The number is secret, but the body still has to tell the truth.
Why secrecy improves the lesson
The secret element is not a gimmick. It addresses a known training problem.
When both people know the same task, they often cooperate without meaning to. Even resistant drilling can become predictable. The defender senses the theme of the round and begins to defend the theme rather than the person.
By hiding the scoring condition, I make the student train against uncertainty. That does not mean chaos. Good coaching needs boundaries. We had a clear rule set, clear control levels and clear safety expectations. The uncertainty sat inside those boundaries.
This is closer to how decision-making works under pressure. In a fight or contest, the other person’s intention is not displayed like a label. You infer it through movement, rhythm, breathing, posture and choice of distance. Sometimes you read correctly. Sometimes you are wrong. Training should include both outcomes.
The dice also removes some ego from the room.
If a student loses a round where their scoring task was difficult, we can look at the problem without melodrama. Did they fail to create the right range? Did they telegraph the objective? Did they ignore easier points because they were chasing the hidden score? The conversation becomes specific.
Specific critique is useful. Vague praise is not.
This is one reason private lessons can be so productive when they are structured properly. Personal Training in martial arts should not mean simply giving someone a hard session and sending them home tired. It should mean giving them the right problem at the right time, watching how they solve it, and adjusting the pressure so the lesson remains honest.
Lessons from putting the ranges together
The main lesson from this session was that integration is not the same as accumulation.
Accumulation means adding more techniques. Integration means making techniques answer each other.
A jab that sets up nothing is just a strike. A jab that draws a guard high, hides level change and creates a takedown entry has become part of a system. A clinch that simply holds is a pause. A clinch that turns the opponent towards the wall, limits their striking and opens a sweep has purpose.
The dice method made these links visible.
It also revealed where transitions were clean and where they became wishful. Most technical failures in mixed training occur during transitions. The punch to clinch. The clinch to takedown. The takedown to ground control. The ground escape to standing. These are the places where people are between identities. They are no longer boxing, not yet wrestling, no longer grappling, not yet safe.
That is why I give them so much attention.
A private lesson allows me to slow those transitions down without sterilising them. We can pause, examine the mistake, restart from the pressure point and then return to live movement. This is not a lecture wrapped around exercise. It is investigation.
There were practical coaching points throughout the rounds:
Do not admire your work
Land, move, frame, recover position or build the next attack.
Know what the range rewards
Long range rewards timing and distance. Clinch rewards posture and control. Ground rewards position and patience.
Do not confuse activity with progress
Movement that does not improve position, create threat or reduce danger is often just noise.
Hide your intention
If the score is secret but your body announces it, the game has already beaten you.
Respect the wall
Boundaries change balance, exits and striking options. Train them before they surprise you.
How this fits my approach to martial arts teaching
I have spent much of my life cutting through romantic stories around combat. That includes martial arts mythology, self-protection folklore, circus history legends and fashionable claims around physical culture. I do not dismiss tradition because it is old, and I do not accept an idea because it sounds tough.
The test is simple: what happens under pressure?
The Secret Dice Method gives me a small laboratory. It is imperfect, as all training methods are, but it produces observations worth trusting. It shows whether a student can adapt. It shows whether technique survives resistance. It shows whether a supposed strength is still a strength when the scoring conditions change.
For clients interested in private mixed martial arts lessons, this is the sort of work I value most. Fitness matters. Technical knowledge matters. Confidence matters. Yet none of them should be built on illusion.
A well-run session should leave a student with clearer questions, not just sweat on the floor.
If you are interested in working this way, you can read more about my approach to mixed martial arts private lessons.
The dice are only a tool. The real method is disciplined uncertainty. Roll the number, hide the score, solve the problem in front of you. That is where training starts to resemble fighting closely enough to teach the truth, while still remaining training.
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